Wednesday

This week I’m having a really hard time keeping track of what day it is.  I think it’s because for some reason, this week has been going pretty fast.

Anyway.  I checked out four books today from the career center.  Two of them are internship guides and two of them are about careers and figuring out what you want to do with your life.

I feel a lot of pressure for this upcoming summer to be really great as far as an internship goes.  I want to do something that will hopefully a) be something I like and b) lead to a full-time position after graduation.  From all my experiences in the past, I know a lot about finding internships and I know (somewhat) what I want to do.  To get an internship, it’s really important to be proactive, persistent, and think outside the box.  I found my internship last summer by contacting a lot of places in my area, and voila, one of them wanted an intern.  Even though it wasn’t listed on their website or anything.  I think a lot of experiences happen because of being in the right place in the right time – which only happens if you’re looking!  Also, it’s really helpful to be creative when searching for internships, because the competitive internships are just that, and you could have an equally rewarding experience at a smaller company.  It’s important to just think about anywhere, potentially, you would want to intern, and reach out to them.  Networking with faculty, past employers, and family friends is really important too.

My internship search is even more complicated by the fact that I don’t really know where I want to be location-wise.  Or, that I sort of do know where I want to be, but I also kind of want to live where my boyfriend does and he doesn’t know where he will be.  Even though we sort of already decided somewhere.  It’s complicated but I think I will continue focusing on the area where I most want to be and live right after graduation.

For me, the most important thing – whether in jobs, experiences, relationships, places to live – is trying it.  If a job sounds great and I hate it, I won’t pursue it anymore.  If a guy sounds great but he isn’t into me .. there go my feelings for him.  If a location sounds perfect but there aren’t any jobs or the traffic is awful, I’ll move.  Experience, experience, experience – especially for someone like me, who is so influenced by my surroundings and is therefore really flighty and indecisive.

These days I think I want to go into marketing or events management.  Those can definitely overlap and have options in a variety of fields, so that should keep my search somewhat open.  I think it might be better to try and intern at a slightly larger company so they are more apt to be able to offer me a position after graduation.  But if they take their interns for granted like somewhere I interned last semester, you are lucky to be an intern there and don’t even think of them offering you a position unless you do something to differentiate yourself from the herd.  I want to be the intern, I think.  I would have really liked my position this summer if it had been oriented more towards the events management side of things with none of the catering/food service aspect.  I liked my supervisor (for the most part) and the people I worked with.  I got paid and was utilized.  If I had been actually doing more things that were up my alley I would have been very happy there.  At least now I know what I liked and didn’t like about the position.

Overall, this whole internship/career things is confusing and complicated.  There are a lot of factors to take into consideration – industry, location, size of company, compensation, competitiveness, etc.  But I am going to try to remain focused on my goal (at least, my goal for now) and not stray to things that look cool to try.  But still I need to remain open-minded and proactive in my search.  Wish me luck …

Em